Architecture review - GPT-4.1

Here’s an expert evaluation of your multiplayer Tetris game architecture, based on the blog series, ADRs, and code:

Evaluation Thought Process:

  1. Modular Design: The architecture is cleanly modularized. Core concepts—such as player input, rendering, game world state, and rules—are separated into distinct modules (player.ts, renderer.ts, world.ts, world_rule.ts). This separation of concerns makes the codebase maintainable and extensible.

  2. Extensible Ruleset: The rules engine is implemented as a list of pure functions (ruleset), making it easy to add, remove, or modify game rules without impacting unrelated logic. This is a strong architectural choice for future feature growth.

  3. Input and Rendering Abstraction: Player input is abstracted via a Player interface, and rendering is handled by a pluggable renderer (e.g., PIXI.js). This allows for future support of different input sources or rendering backends with minimal changes to the core logic.

  4. Local Multiplayer Focus: The current design is optimized for local multiplayer (split-screen, shared keyboard/display). There is no abstraction for networking, remote input, or game state synchronization across devices.

  5. Game Loop and State Management: The game loop is managed via a ticker abstraction, and the world state is encapsulated in a central module. State transitions are explicit and testable, which is good for reliability and debugging.

  6. Testing and Documentation: There is evidence of unit tests for core rules (world_rule.test.js), and the blog posts serve as living documentation, which aids onboarding and future maintenance.

Suggestions for Improvement:

  • Abstract input sources further to support remote/networked players, not just keyboard events.
  • Introduce serialization and synchronization mechanisms for game state to enable multi-device or online multiplayer.
  • Add a networking layer (e.g., WebSockets) to support remote play and state consistency.
  • Expand integration and end-to-end tests to cover multiplayer edge cases and performance.
  • Consider optimizing performance-critical sections (e.g., collision detection) for scalability.

Summary: Your architecture is robust for local multiplayer and well-structured for maintainability and extensibility. To improve, focus on abstracting input sources, serializing and synchronizing game state, and introducing a networking layer to support multi-device multiplayer. Adding integration tests and optimizing performance-critical sections will further future-proof the codebase. This will enable the game to scale from local to remote multiplayer with minimal disruption to the core logic.